Mumbai: In pedestrian-friendly push, BMC to boost last-mile connectivity

Thackeray was speaking on Thursday at the concluding event of the training organised by Global Designing Cities Initiatives and Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiatives for Global Road Safety for over 340 road engineers last week.

“Worldwide, the principle of last-mile connectivity has changed. Now roads are designed and constructed keeping in mind the safety of pedestrians. We are working on making the city roads world-class. As a pilot project in each ward, at least one road could be constructed in a pedestrian-friendly manner that will boost last-mile connectivity,” he said. The BMC maintains a road network of about 2,100 km across its 24 administrative wards.

“In Mumbai, travel is calculated by time instead of kilometres. Only about 7 per cent of the citizens here use their private vehicles, but still there is huge traffic on city roads. Many big projects are lined up to resolve the traffic issue,” the minister said.

He also emphasised strengthening public transport systems like BEST as bus routes are more flexible to changes than Metro lines. “Across the world transport experts have opined that buses are more beneficial than metro lines. Once the Metro line is built, there is no chance to change the alignment if the requirements change, but bus routes can always be changed,” Thackeray pointed out.